Creating a splash page

  • My client wants a splash page for her site.

    I’ve looked at a couple of plugins, but they are either too limited in their options or far too involved for what I want, which is the ability to create a plain home page (no nav, no footer, etc.) with a single image on it and an “Enter here” button.

    1) Any suggestions for a plugin that will do this?

    2) Alternatively, it occurs to me I could create a plain page template and simply use that as my home page. Would that work, or am I missing something?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • That would work!

    Thread Starter jgold723

    (@jgold723)

    And it did!

    Thanks.

    MiroslavR

    (@miroslavr)

    @jgold723 Can you give me some explanations (or directions) about implement plain page template as a splash page in wp? My client has a site in three languages, and he wants language chooser as a splash page.

    Thread Starter jgold723

    (@jgold723)

    I can give you some broad strokes, because it will vary, depending upon what you’re using for a theme.

    Just a note: You can build the files you need from scratch. I found it easier to copy pages from the existing theme and then modify them by removing the functions I didn’t want.

    First, I’d strongly suggest that you work with a child theme and not the parent theme. Then:

    1) From the parent theme, make copies of the header.php, footer.php, and whatever template the theme uses for its pages (in the theme I was working on, there was a folder of different page templates — I chose the simplest one)

    2) Rename these files to footer-splash.php, header-splash.php, template-splash.php

    3) Modify the files to remove the formatting and/or sections you don’t want to appear. For example, I removed all the widget positions in the footer file, because I didn’t want the widgets on my splash page. and I removed the sidebar coding on the template page because I didn’t want a sidebar.

    4) Make sure you change the references to the header and footer in the template to the new files you’ve created.

    5) Modify your template file to add the code for your language picker.
    I find it’s best to hardcode everything directly onto the template, because WordPress will strip out Javascript if you try to enter it through the editor.

    6) Put these three files in your child theme.

    7) Go to your site admin and create a new page. Be sure to select the new template you created as the template for that page.

    8) Save that page

    9) In the settings area, under “Reading” select your new page as the home page

    10) Go visit your new home page — you should see your splash page

    The key to this are steps 3,4,5 — you want to remove the code that creates the items you don’t want, but leave the code that is critical for WordPress and also critical to the overall design of the site.

    Some references I found helpful:

    https://developer.www.ads-software.com/themes/template-files-section/page-template-files/

    https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-create-a-custom-page-in-wordpress/

    Thanks a lot!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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